People are treated with apprehension and distrust to everything new, just like people immediately treated electricity, internet and credit cards. I think time will pass, it can be five or ten years and people will begin to understand and trust to bitcoin and will get used to it.
Yes, there's definitely an element of that too. It doesn't help that mainstream media often call it a scam/ponzi/bubble/etc, meaning that some people are less inclined to look into it because the media have already told them what to think. Everyone wants to get their information second-hand rather than finding out for themselves. I suspect it's going to take a while for perceptions to change.
You need to understand a small number of things:
1. Wallet safety and computer safety.
To play devil's advocate, this alone is sometimes too complicated a subject for many people, heh. By the time you've told them to be careful with online services designed to hold funds (which should always be one of the first things to explain to new users), make regular backups, how to store the backups securely, use a unique and strong password, not lose your password, how to keep your devices secure and malware-free, etc. many of them will have glazed over and forgotten half of what you just told them.